But now, I have to wonder

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of when JG and I started dating, and I forgot to write out a card for him to find in the morning. I only remembered after the fact as I was driving to work, and I didn’t even feel guilty, that is, until the guilt immediately set in about my apathy. I’m rolling my eyes just thinking about it: I felt guilty for not feeling bad about writing JG a card for the anniversary of when we officially decided that we were dating, even though everyone else we knew already assumed that was the case. Yes, I thought so. It was ridiculous.

When we were dating, I had a habit of extrapolating every struggle we had and viewing it under the When We’re Married lens. How will we decide which channel to watch when we’re married? What if we don’t get any better at phone conversations for when we’re married? Will JG ditch me for more exciting plans when we’re married? How will I know when to push an issue when we’re married? And so on. It made sense in my mind because I wanted to explore every little possibility and tackle it proactively. This habit made for long, tearful conversations, and on more than one occasion, JG looked at me in exasperation, and asked, “Why do we have to settle this now?” At first, those words hit a nerve with me — wasn’t he invested in our future? Over time, I realized that it was more constructive for me to identify patterns of behavior rather than speculate on every little bump in the road. If I had known that the answers to my questions would come in the form of DVR; we won’t get better; no, he won’t; and I will have no clue, I doubt that I would have spent as much time and energy on that train of thought.

Despite all the analysis, I failed to consider the possibility of good things we did that we might not continue in the future: namely, small celebrations. JG and I used to send each other cards for every occasion, even for things like getting through a tough exam. Campus mail was free, and I have a battered shoebox full of notes from those days. It’s an old story about magic fading and little things being swept under the rug, but I never thought about it for us. That was for other people, out there, in the ether, not us. But now, I have to wonder: is routine where sentiment goes to die?

The reality is that someone needs to pay the bills, cook the food, clean the house, maintain the cars, keep up the calendar, and see to all the gritty things that compose the daily grind and leave precious little room for thinking about special occasions to come and whether one has a nice little card waiting in the wings. It’s not that being sentimental is impossible under the strain of everyday life, but the conditions aren’t exactly conducive to it. I don’t mean to hold myself to an unrealistic expectation or set up legalistic obligations about what our relationship should look like, and I’m not measuring my marriage in terms of notes in a shoebox. I don’t necessarily blame myself for forgetting, but I don’t like that I did.

As I expected, JG didn’t mind at all, but he understood where I was coming from when I said that I didn’t want to be one of those people who remembers an important date and observes it in saying, “Hey, could you empty the washer so I can start a load of laundry? Oh, and happy twentieth anniversary, honey.”

There I go again, extrapolating, which is still, unsurprisingly, an exercise in futility.

Before bed, JG and I curled up together and mused about how young we were when we started dating, and how long ago we started being a “we” on that October 1 of yore. Too soon, JG succumbed to sleep, but I paused before turning on my book light to turn over our shared memories in my mind. It’s funny how fond remembrance makes things sweet over time, and now that I think about it, that might be the whole point of this anniversary thing.